The Not Face
March 28, 2016 11:59 AM   Subscribe

Ohio State University researchers have identified a facial expression that is interpreted across several languages and cultures as negative, combining anger, disgust and contempt. It combines a furrowed brow, pressed lips and raised chin. In American Sign Language, it can even be used in place of a sign or gesture for "not."
posted by larrybob (51 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 
Wow. If you want to see how I look every day on public transit, this is it.

I have mush features and am completely incapable of rendering the so-called Resting Bitch Face (which is honestly how I'd prefer to present on transit) and this is the very best I can do. I'm glad it's A Thing.

"phunniemee, how are you feeling today?"
"NOT."

See synonyms at.
posted by phunniemee at 12:03 PM on March 28, 2016 [13 favorites]


Looks like Grumpy Cat. (Across species too?)
posted by Schmucko at 12:04 PM on March 28, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'm pretty sure this is my default face at work many, many days. I think the read of the expression is probably wrong though because I assure you I am never ever angry, disgusted, or contemptous at work.
posted by vuron at 12:05 PM on March 28, 2016 [4 favorites]


Reminds me of the Reddit "No." face.
posted by bleep at 12:09 PM on March 28, 2016


Also I wonder if they will make a connection between signers using their faces as grammatical markers and emojis. Humans use their faces to communicate.
posted by bleep at 12:11 PM on March 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


I refer to it as "broccoli face", as it the default face preschoolers often make when faced with a tray of veggie snacks the first time.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 12:16 PM on March 28, 2016 [13 favorites]


While I admit that Desmond Morris' work has its detractors, a lot of what I read in one of his books years ago seems to make some sense - including the notion that some facial expressions and some gestures seem to have had their origins in how we relate to babies.

I say this because - that face, especially the firmly-shut mouth part, reminds me of a five-month-old who is absolutely determined not to eat their strained peas, and is pressing their lips together to make sure not even an atom of the stuff enters their mouth. And - maybe that is how that expression came to be interpreted as "negative" on a universal scale.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:17 PM on March 28, 2016 [8 favorites]


Do the pictures all reflect the same emotion, though? Here's my scientific analysis.

Guy #1 looks like he just remembered upon reaching the office that his coffee is on the table at home.

Guy #2 is frozen in that exact moment when you know it's socially unacceptable to laugh.

Lady #3 is trying to decide whether to call you on your weak, stale-ass bullshit or just let it go.

Guy #4 just heard a really bad dad joke.
posted by selfnoise at 12:17 PM on March 28, 2016 [54 favorites]


I'm pretty sure this is my default face at work many, many days

Ugh, for real. Now I have to worry about my Resting Not Face.
posted by pullayup at 12:21 PM on March 28, 2016 [12 favorites]


I refer to it as "broccoli face"

At Easter Sunday lunch yesterday my niece looked at my plate and said "broccoli?" and I said "yes I love broccoli mmmmmm yum" as I shovelled some in my face (hey maybe I'll inspire her to think broccoli is like so rad!!) and her face could not have been more "not" if she had authored this article.
posted by billiebee at 12:22 PM on March 28, 2016 [5 favorites]


“Where did language come from? This is a question that the scientific community has grappled with for a very long time,” he continued. “This study strongly suggests a link between language and facial expressions of emotion.”

What? No it doesn't. It suggests that a lot of people make a certain face when they're rejecting something. That has nothing to do with grammar or language.
posted by languagehat at 12:30 PM on March 28, 2016 [6 favorites]


I would describe this as my ehhhhhhhhhhh face. Like I'm trying to formulate a polite way to say "fuck no" while my face says "no" already.
posted by Tesseractive at 12:31 PM on March 28, 2016


Hmm. Is it just me, or is everyone in those photos looks like they're trying their best not to laugh while making an "I'm angry, I swear!" face?
posted by suedehead at 12:32 PM on March 28, 2016 [7 favorites]


Mr. Yuk ?
posted by mikelieman at 12:33 PM on March 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


The Trump
posted by Sangermaine at 12:33 PM on March 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


Not to be confused with the "Are you the boss of me?" face or the combative "I didn't hear you but if i did you could go fuck yourself" face. Of course, those in management have perfected the "Your silly concerns makes me want to stab you in the face" face or the ubiquitous "Why are you still standing here like this is a museum?" face.

Facial expression systems at work - learn them and despair, kids!
posted by Foci for Analysis at 12:36 PM on March 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


Oh. I've been calling that Tommy Lee Jones Face for a while now.
posted by palomar at 12:52 PM on March 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


:-|
posted by dismas at 12:54 PM on March 28, 2016 [4 favorites]


What? No it doesn't. It suggests that a lot of people make a certain face when they're rejecting something. That has nothing to do with grammar or language.

It's not crazy-- there's been a growing body of work looking at coordination between gestures and prosody. Rob Podesva, for example, has some (new, been presented, but isn't published yet) work that's linking up creaky voice with a lack of body movement; Norma Mendoza-Denton and Stefanie Jannedy have done work looking at the alignment of gesture and f0 peaks; and there's also research looking at how the acquisition of the meaning of facial expressions that mark incredulity goes along with (or doesn't) the acquisition of intonational contours that mark incredulity; see here, for example.

So, I'd personally want to look and see if the facial expressions align with prosodic gestures of some sort; that would at least suggest a link between the facial gestures and the linguistic system, in this case.
posted by damayanti at 12:54 PM on March 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


AKA: The finding out the other person on your date is really into Ayn Rand face.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 12:56 PM on March 28, 2016 [5 favorites]


I found the one for noneverabsolutelynot.
posted by aeshnid at 12:57 PM on March 28, 2016


ಠ_ಠ , surely
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 12:58 PM on March 28, 2016 [6 favorites]


:-|

more like >:-|

I call it Angry Bert Face.
posted by emjaybee at 12:59 PM on March 28, 2016 [6 favorites]


To clarify: The link between language and facial expressions, and having some sort of alignment between prosody and gestures, which is basically the claim they're trying to make with explaining the "rhythm" of the facial gestures? Not entirely crazy, in my opinion. Jumping from that to "Therefore, origins of language!", yeah, kind of crazy.

(And, unfortunately, it looks like the level of alignment they look at is at the sentence, rather than word or syllable level, which makes me assume it's not there-- I bet if they had found something, they would've reported it.)
posted by damayanti at 1:03 PM on March 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


*The Ohio State University.
posted by kevinbelt at 1:10 PM on March 28, 2016 [3 favorites]


see also
posted by sebastienbailard at 1:12 PM on March 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


When universal facial expressions are discovered, they usually aren't taken to indicate something about language. They're more often taken to signal the presence of an emotion.

Could there be an emotion of denial or disbelief that has gone underexplored in the affective sciences? It's kind of a tantalizing question.
posted by painquale at 1:14 PM on March 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


I thought this was a "Not" face...
posted by Chuffy at 1:23 PM on March 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


The Queen of the Not face.
posted by billiebee at 1:25 PM on March 28, 2016 [9 favorites]


It looks like they are all crossing their eyes a little, too!

Is that part of it?
posted by grobstein at 1:32 PM on March 28, 2016


Sometimes when I'm at home alone I catch sight of myself in a mirror looking like a mild cross between #2 and #3. I'm always happy to see that because it's a little sign of freedom: that's what my face does when there's nobody around who's going to get bent out of shape about how I'm presenting myself socially.

It's the raggedy sweatpants of facial expressions -- wouldn't want to wear that forever, but sometimes it sure feels good to change into it at home and celebrate how much I do not have to care just then.
posted by phantom powered at 2:06 PM on March 28, 2016 [5 favorites]


“This study strongly suggests a link between language and facial expressions of emotion.”

Languagehat: What? No it doesn't.


Also, it looks like these other facial expressions, which proves that they have a common origin.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:25 PM on March 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


Love the face presented by Aleix Martinez, the cognitive scientist quoted in the article. It's like he's doing his best to have a not-not face.
posted by chavenet at 2:32 PM on March 28, 2016 [2 favorites]




There are already several emojis that approximate that look... we just have to decide which is best:
😐 😑 😒 🙁 😣 😖 😓
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:35 PM on March 28, 2016


I'm not Deaf or a native ASL signer, but I believe that a "furrowed brow" is a wh-question grammatical marker in ASL. I read a paper once that examined hearing bilinguals who spoke English and signed ASL, and looked at their faces when they produced two types of sentences for which ASL has mandatory facial grammar: conditionals (raised eyebrows) and wh-questions (furrowed eyebrows). They found that when they produced conditional sentences, the bilinguals often used the ASL facial grammar of raising their eyebrows (79% in English, 97% in ASL). But when they produced wh-questions, the bilinguals were much less likely to furrow their eyebrows when speaking English (37%), though still quite likely to furrow their brows in ASL (85%). The authors argued that while ASL facial grammar leaks into English production in these bilinguals, but social conditioning inhibits furrowing your brow outside of the ASL context.

I guess that's all just to say that I'm curious how wh-question production factored into the ASL results reported here, since brow furrowing seems complicated in ASL.
posted by joan cusack the second at 3:07 PM on March 28, 2016 [7 favorites]


Kevinbelt: *The Ohio State University ...

Marching Band will now form a Not Face while playing “Tell Her No.”
posted by NorthernLite at 3:14 PM on March 28, 2016


Somewhere some scientist's father is thinking "7 years of college, three cross-country moves, $250K in debt, but now she proved that frowning people are frowning, by god..."

Ironically, while making this face.
posted by Navelgazer at 4:57 PM on March 28, 2016 [7 favorites]


Related: The Gas Face.
posted by Lyme Drop at 5:10 PM on March 28, 2016


This is the face I make when someone corrects me with "THEE Ohio State University."
posted by Existential Dread at 6:10 PM on March 28, 2016 [3 favorites]


Eh, I don't know about all this.
posted by aydeejones at 6:16 PM on March 28, 2016


Not
posted by aydeejones at 6:16 PM on March 28, 2016


I do think there's a hard link and tempo between facial expression, body language, and spoken language (which is why dudes have so much trouble with ladies amirite western culture) and that languagehat is getting his "splitter" on, but it does strike me as somewhat facile but maybe not in that "I must be missing something here" sense
posted by aydeejones at 6:22 PM on March 28, 2016


Isn't this Ted Cruz'standard expression?
posted by gt2 at 7:01 PM on March 28, 2016


“This study strongly suggests a link between language and facial expressions of emotion.”


I recently took an acting workshop on how to do various accents and dialects. A major factor in this skill is to be conscious of the anatomy of the vocal apparatus: lips, tongue, teeth, jaws, uvula and so on. Certain languages are distinguished by a preponderance of particular facial expressions -- lips pursed and thrust forward to make some, tongue tip at the teeth to make others... It surprised me at first how modifying the face automatically made your speech sound like it was from a particular region, or like a person speaking English as a second language. So there's a connection between facial expression and the sounds and rhythms of languages.
posted by binturong at 7:34 PM on March 28, 2016 [4 favorites]


Hmm.
posted by notyou at 8:08 PM on March 28, 2016


All those faces look like the "I feel you" face to me. It's a pretty bizarre face when you think about it, but everyone I know does it and I do it myself. Like let's say somebody just said something deep and you don't have an immediate response, you nod your head and do this exaggerated frown sorta like you're thinking deep. It's not a negative face by any means. As always, just depends on the context.
posted by pravit at 7:42 AM on March 29, 2016


> languagehat is getting his "splitter" on

Nope. See damayanti's comments above for a more nuanced explanation of my position, especially this:

> The link between language and facial expressions, and having some sort of alignment between prosody and gestures, which is basically the claim they're trying to make with explaining the "rhythm" of the facial gestures? Not entirely crazy, in my opinion. Jumping from that to "Therefore, origins of language!", yeah, kind of crazy.
posted by languagehat at 9:05 AM on March 29, 2016


This is my curious, listening, inquisitive face, and I am pretty sure people who don't know me well think I am just angry... which is very rare.
posted by terrapin at 12:56 PM on March 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


ಠ_ಠ

In our office Slack, I made an emoji of this with the shortcut :nopeeyes:.
posted by epersonae at 8:34 PM on March 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


(Across species too?)

Maybe?
posted by homunculus at 10:55 PM on March 29, 2016


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